The Clarke County School District has received statewide and national recognition for its farm-to-school programs, which have positively impacted our students and district as a whole. We would like to recognize our schools, staff, and teachers that contribute to this achievement. The CCSD F2S Champions Awards recognizes the educators, staff, and community members who go above and beyond to make garden-based learning a success at the school level.

We will be taking nominations until March 18, 2019. Selected leaders will be honored at the CCSD F2S Champions Awards, a catered ceremony, at the Athens Community Career Academy on April 3rd.

The School Garden Network can be accessed by calling KACCB at 706-613-3501 x309 or emailing stacy.smith@accgov.com.

Need a School Garden Workday to get your beds ready for school?

This year we've set up a one stop questionnaire to get you signed up for volunteers, help, tools, compost, and mulch. Let us know your garden workday plans and needs now so we can start getting resources sent your way.

• Make second plantings of such quickly-maturing crops as turnips, mustard greens, radishes and "spring onions."
• Thin plants when they are 2 to 3 inches tall to give the plants room to grow.
• Before settling them in the garden, harden-off transplants - place them in their containers outdoors in a sheltered place a few days ahead of planting them.
• Watch out for insects, especially cutworms, plant lice (aphids) and red spider mites.

Do you work in or with school gardens? Do you have a story you’d like to share broadly? Would you like to see your story published in a book collection for school garden researchers and practitioners?

We are inviting school garden practitioners to submit vignettes (short stories, narrative essays, creative works--poems, images, visual art, etc.) that showcase something you find valuable, challenging, enriching, surprising, or important about working with learners in school gardens.

Contributors can be anyone who has experience working with school gardens in a K-12 context: general or special education teachers, informal garden educators, parents, students, volunteers, school administrators, support staff, nutrition service staff, paraprofessionals, etc. Contributors can be novice or experienced working in school gardens.

Curricular aims for using school gardens could be anything (e.g. science, math, agriculture, STEM, social studies, art, creative writing, gifted and talented, special education, social and emotional development, etc.)

We are looking for contributions from schools in across a wide-range of contexts: urban, rural, and suburban, serving low-, middle-, and high-income student populations.

Accepted contributions will be included in a book that links school garden research with practice. Contributions will be organized across themes and complemented with critical analysis to create a platform for educators from various positionalities to share their experiences and voice their hopes and challenges of working in/with school gardens. We aim to include the experiences of contributors with a range of experience with school gardens and working in a variety of educational settings.

The organizers of this volume are Dr. Sarah Stapleton, PhD (a science & environmental educator and Assistant Professor in the College of Education at the University of Oregon) and Dr. Jennifer Jo Thompson, PhD (a medical anthropologist and Assistant Research Scientist in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at the University of Georgia).

Need materials to cook with in your classroom? Borrow the mobile cooking cart from the Office of Service Learning and/or contact a local chef to come cook with your class! Contact stacy.smith@accgov.com to learn more!